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‘Suicide Squad’ Box Office: $125 Million To $135 Million Opening Weekend

By Stephen Jordan
Published on: 08:32 PST, Jul 14, 2016

Suicide Squad’s box office should be promising during its opening weekend in August when it hits theaters if recent reports are accurate. The Warner Bros. supervillain team-up movie is following the highly divisive Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, so it is definitely carrying a lot of expectations on its shoulders. WB has to prove that their DCEU is headed in the right direction, and David Ayer’s Suicide Squad is the next step in that process. What’s really interesting is that the actors have not been doing a whole lot of press for the film.

Regardless of all of that, Suicide Squad should see a $125 million opening weekend at the box office, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Pre-release tracking actually suggests that the movie could open even higher, possibly at $135 million on its opening weekend, depending on what box office analyst you speak to.

Batman v Superman’s box office numbers were not as stellar as they could have been considering that the movie never made it to at least $1 billion worldwide. Instead, BvS hit around $872 million for its worldwide box office take, and given that this is the first time both Superman and Batman have appeared in a cinematic live-action film together, it should have made a billion easily. Warner Bros. is well aware of this, though, and they’ve stated that they are satisfied with the financial success of Dawn of Justice.

Suicide Squad’s box-office numbers surely won’t be anywhere near what BvS brought in, but it’s important that the movie does well. If Suicide Squad’s opening weekend does indeed reach $125 million to $135 million, it will be setting a new box-office record for the month of August, a month that isn’t known for ridiculously huge box-office numbers.

According to Deadline, a non-Warner Bros. executive said that the tracking is “huge across all quadrants,” and “demographically it looks like Deadpool.” That R-rated film clocked in at $363 million domestically and $782 million worldwide – which is more than X-Men: Apocalypse.

Suicide Squad also has some star power going for it, with the likes of Will Smith, Margot Robbie, and, of course, the allure of such fan-favorite DC Comics characters like Harley Quinn and the Joker. However, the stars of the film have not been doing the usual rounds of press interviews in the weeks leading up to the film’s release — only a few online interviews here and there.

In a recent interview, director David Ayer talked about how Ben Affleck’s Batman will be portrayed in Suicide Squad, noting a stark difference between how the character is usually portrayed in his heroic solo films.

“All the Batman movies have been from Batman’s point of view. He’s the good guy. He’s the hero of his own movie in all the movies we’ve seen. If you look at what Bruce Wayne has done in creating the Batman persona, his idea was to terrorize criminals. It’s sort of psychological warfare against criminals. This wraith that comes in the night and attacks and pulls criminals from society. For the first time, we’re seeing Batman from the point of view of the criminals and he’s freaking scary.”

Affleck’s Batman was one of the most talked-about and well-liked components of Batman v Superman, so having him in the movie is certainly going to help bring in a bigger audience. The addition of seeing Jared Leto’s take on the Joker, after Heath Ledger’s award-winning performance in 2008 with Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, is also a plus for the film’s box-office future.

Suicide Squad opens in theaters August 5, 2016. The film is followed by Wonder Woman on June 2, 2017, and Justice League November 17, 2017.

[Image via Warner Bros.]

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